Contract Law: Past, Present and Future

The first edition of Chitty on Contracts was published in 1826. To mark its 200th anniversary, the Private Law Group at University College London is hosting a one-day conference on Friday 12 June 2026. There will be papers on Chitty’s place in legal history, on current issues in contract law and on developments that may be needed in the future. Papers will be presented by academics and commented upon by practitioners in panels chaired by judges.

The conference is organised by the current and future editors of Chitty, Hugh Beale (Warwick) and Paul S Davies (UCL)

• Lord Leggatt: Chitty at 200
• Katy Barnett: Contract damages and legal treatises: past, present and future
• Birke Haecker: Two Models of Contract Variation – and the Doctrine of Consideration
• Peter MacDonald Eggers: Insurance policies as composite contracts
• Catharine MacMillan: Who read Chitty’s The Law of Contracts and to what effect?
• Joanna McCunn: Reasonable, favourable, and popular: contractual interpretation in early editions of Chitty
• Janet O’Sullivan: The regime for damages under the Misrepresentation Act 1967 – a tort/contract chimera
• Ben McFarlane and Andreas Televantos: Can Equity Make Promises Good?: Lessons from History
• Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell: From electronic contracts to automated contracting: Contract Law in a quandary
• Rob Stevens: Chitty and Equity
• Tan Cheng Han: Rethinking Agency Law for the Future
• Simon Whittaker: Mandatory Regimes of Contractual Good Faith
• Goh Yihan SC and Man Yip: Comparative Commerciality in Contract Law

• Lady Rose
• Lord Burrows
• Dame Sara Cockerill
• Sir David Foxton (TBC)

08:45 Registration
09:15 Introduction and Panel 1
11:15 Break
11:45 Panel 2
13:15 Lunch
14:15 Panel 3
15:45 Break
16:15 Panel 4
17:45 Closing Remarks
18:00 Reception
19:00 Optional Dinner

See the conference website for information about the speakers at:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/2026/jun/contract-law-past-present-and-future